Code Three - 02 - Once a Cop Page 6

  "Right now, the Thruways are designed to handle traffic up to five hundred miles an hour. But already, the new reaction engines can push well past the six hundred mark without straining and will probably go to eight hundred under stress. We've got to make modifications in both roadway design and patrol equipment. On top of that, consider how we're set up right now. We've got the Thruways with their four speed lanes. But how many drivers—especially those buying the new and hotter models—are satisfied any longer with drifting along in the white lane limits. Or even in the green. The bulk of the traffic is shifting to the blue and yellow and even the cargo carriers are hotter and are now moving into the blue.

  "The system has got to be modified and that just doesn't mean raising the speed limits in all lanes. The roadways themselves have to be redesigned for the higher speeds. And there are more ground vehicles using the Thruways every day as the speeds increase. Air travel is picking up but the average man still can't afford to buy or fly an air-car, chopper or jet for the entire family when for a tenth of the cost he can get the same space and even speed, in a ground vehicle.

  "We need more patrolmen, faster and better equipment - and the experienced officers to train them and work with them until they're ready to take over a cruiser by themselves. Clay is almost ready. Don't tell him this, but this is his last year on junior status. I hate to lose him but I'm recommending him for his own car at the end of this tour. So you see, I just can't walk out of the cruiser and say 'Chief, I've had it. Put me on a desk.' I'm still needed where I am, at least for another year or so. Then we'll see what the shuffle turns up."

  He took a long drag on his drink and looked at Kelly. "You understand, don't you princess?"

  Kelly sat with her head down, her face concealed. Without looking at Ben, she began talking.

  "Ben," she said, "at the risk of losing all of my maidenly virtues, I want to ask you a direct question and I want a direct and honest answer." She hesitated and then blurted out, "Are you in love with me?"

  Ben put down his glass and took her chin in his hand and raised her face.

  "I love you more than anything in this world, princess," he said. Blissfully ignoring anyone who might have been watching, their lips met in a long and loving kiss.

  Kelly finally sat back with a happy. glazed look on her face. Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Then the girl shook her head and smiled delightedly. "Now that that's settled," she cried, "a girl can settle down and do some planning."

  She leaned over and kissed him again.

  On the morning of their fifth day in Los Angeles, Ben Martin, and Clay Ferguson were again standing in front of the dispatcher's counter in the barracks headquarters. On the assignment board was the illuminated line reading, "Car 56—Martin-Ferguson-Lightfoot." In the next column was the assignment "NAT 70-E."

  Both officers had their log sheets out to make notes as the dispatcher punched up the mural map and NAT 70-E on the big board.

  "This is a milk run for you guys this time," the dispatcher said. "Since you've got this court hearing coming up in a little more than a couple of weeks you don't get a full run. You get 70-E to Oklahoma City, a three-day layover and then right back here on 70-W."

  He picked up an electric pointer and began picking out salient trouble points on the route. There were very few discrepancy symbols on 70-E. He flicked the light at a stretch of the roadway just east of the Arizona state line.

  "We've got crews working in the yellow on the outside rim just south of Kingman on the big curve." He moved the light eastward. "Gallup has been reporting some bad sandstorms and drifting sands with lowered visibility between here and Albuquerque. Other than that, she's green all the way,"

  The troopers picked up their clip boards and with helmets slung over their arms, headed out to the parking area where Kelly was already aboard Beulah and checking her supply inventory.

  A half hour later Car 56 rolled off the line and down the incline to the Thruway entrances. Clay at the controls, angled Beulah towards the portal marked "70-E" and ten minutes later the cruiser burst out into the bright sunlight and heavy traffic of the eastbound thruway.

  The patrol quickly settled down into almost humdrum existence. The weather was clear and hot and once beyond the sprawling limits of Los Angeles, the traffic thinned out to a mere eighteen thousand vehicles per hundred-mile block. Ben took the first watch while Clay caught up on some missed sleep during the Los Angeles layover. Six hours and as many hundred miles later, they switched off. Traffic was light enough for them to pull off to the service strip and stop for leisurely dinner in the tiny galley-

  Outside, the mercury hovered at the 100-mark, but inside the big cruiser the air conditioners kept it a pleasant seventy degrees. As predicted, the winds blew and the sand flew as Beulah rolled across the burning hot lanes east of Gallup, New Mexico. Caution lights were flashing in all lanes and Albuquerque Control had closed the yellow from Gallup to Grants. Visibility in the blowing dust dropped to less than a half mile but the only trouble came when a huge cargo carrier tried to get out of the blue and missed a crossover. Car 56, rolling along slowly at fifty, came up on the unsuspecting carrier gingerly feeling its way down the dead center of the police emergency lane. Ben pulled Beulah alongside the carrier and flashed his red lights.

  The cargo driver brought his vehicle to a halt. Ben turned the radio to standard all-vehicle frequency. "You're lost, Mac," he said good-naturedly. "I hate to tell you this, but you're right in the middle of the red:" Both officers laughed at the gasp of stunned amazement on the face of the trucker. They waved to him and grinned and he returned the wave. "Follow us," Ben instructed him, "and we'll both see if we can find the edge of this road."

  With the cargo carrier close behind, Beulah eased over to the right-hand curb of the police lane until Ben found a crossover. He hit his tail lights in rapid succession and aimed a side spotlight to indicate the ramp. The trucker blasted his horn in thanks as he turned off the police lane into the green.

  Ben moved Beulah out and the patrol continued.

  Beyond Albuquerque, the dust and sand subsided. The great Thruway arrowed mile after unchanging mile across the heart of the Southwest. Video monitor camera towers flashed by every ten miles, a turretlike Patrol checkpoint looming up from the side of the police lane every hundred miles. Beyond the outer and inner lanes were the green, reclaimed wastelands of what was once sagebrush and mesquite desert. Huge 200-inch plastisteel pipes crisscrossed the land, bringing de-salined sea water from the oceans hundreds of miles away. Nuclear reactor relay pumping stations sent the great torrents of life-giving waters surging across mountain and valleys to spill onto the mineral-rich sandy loam of the desert and turn it into the new salad bowl of the continent.

  Five days out of Los Angeles, Car 56 rolled down the Patrol ramps and into Oklahoma City Barracks and a brief layover before the return trip. As the trio walked away from Beulah, service crews were already swarming over the big cruiser for a fast check out and refueling.

  "Man, what a pleasure jaunt that was," Clay exclaimed happily. "First time since I've been aboard that bucket I ever really had time to get more than a half decent cat nap."

  "It was a milk run, wasn't it," Kelly said, walking between the two tall troopers. She smiled up at Ben and winked. "Didn't seem like the sort of patrol that calls for very much experience, sergeant."

  Ben smiled. "Just the lull before the storm, Kitten. You don't get many like this one. Enjoy it while you can."

  They checked into the dispatch office, cleared the log and were assigned quarters. Clay fished in his pocket for his address book. He flipped the pages and then headed for the phones. "See you two Wednesday," he called.

  "Oh no," Kelly moaned, "not in Oklahoma City, too?"

  "Oh, it's not what you think," Clay called back. "There's this nice old lady I met in San Francisco. I promised her that if I ever got into Oklahoma City I'd call up her niece and drop in and then report back to the little old lady on
whether her niece had grown up any since the last time she saw her. Just my bounden duty, you know." He galloped off to the phones.

  Wednesday morning, Car 56 rolled back out of Oklahoma City Barracks, this time on 70-west, once again en route to Los Angeles. Clay slumped in the lefthand seat. Ben looked over at him. "Had the nice little old lady's niece grown any?" he asked.

  Clay sighed happily. "Full grown, dad. Full grown." Shortly after the cruiser hit the outer Thruway, Oklahoma City Control was on the air.

  "Oak City Control to Car 56."

  Ben replied.

  "Car 56, dispatcher says he had a telegram for you and forgot to deliver it before you got away. Sorry," the controller said.

  "Who's it addressed to ?" Ben asked.

  "To 'Patrol Sergeant Ben Martin.' "

  "Go ahead and open it, please," Ben said, "and read it to me. This is Martin."

  "Affirmative," Oak City said. "Message follows: 'Original offer remains open for another forty-eight hours. Additionally directed to offer post of Director of Transportation. Salary unlimited. Please contact me in Los Angeles."

  "Is that all?" Ben asked.

  "Yep. It's signed, 'Marvin Hughes, personnel director, Shellwood Electronics.' "

  Ben signed off and looked at his partner. Kelly had come up into the cab in time to hear the message.

  "Ben," she said, "I'm scared of them."

  "They didn't get the message," Ben said grimly. "I guess I'll have to spell it out for them, this time more emphatically."

  The weather continued to hold hot and dry all through Texas and New Mexico and even the winds had died away. Car 56 rolled slowly westward, pausing once to give assistance to a disabled cargo carrier. Once again it was an uneventful trip, with Kelly catching up on her medical journals and Ben and Clay taking easy six-hour tricks in the cab and time for letter-writing and study.

  A summer thunderstorm was gathering in the west when Beulah rolled into the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona. It was close to 1700 hours of the third day out of Oklahoma city. The traffic was light and Ben gave the word to pull up for dinner. He pulled Beulah off onto the service strip between the police and green lane and then reached for the radio. "Flag Control this is Car 56. We are out to dinner in your fair city. Don't call us, we'll call you."

  "Right, Five Six," Flagstaff Control came back. "We'll send out the keys to the city and a bottle of red. Report in when you're back in service."

  With speakers mounted throughout Beulah's compartments and storerooms, Control operators could reach the crew at any moment of the day or night wherever they might be in the vehicle.

  Ben slid out of his seat and headed for the galley. Dinner over, Kelly shoveled the dishes into the disposal unit and generally tidied up in the galley. Clay and Ben climbed back into their bucket seats and Ben reported Beulah ready to roll. Although it was still just a little after 1800 hours, the skies were fast darkening under the great mass of thunderheads and rain clouds moving closer from the west.

  "Looks like we'll get a cooling off and a wash-down," Clay commented, pointing at the clouds.

  Ben shoved Beulah into gear. "Water's always welcome out here, piped or natural."

  Car 56 rolled back onto the police lane and continued westward. Fifteen minutes later, the first great, dusty drops of rain splattered against the cab bubble and a minute later they were deep inside the summer downpour. Ben switched on the headlight and wipers as the rain thundered down. He pushed the speed up to a hundred and the rain sailed off the rounded bubble much faster. Traffic was increasing in both the green and blue while an occasional car flashed by in the yellow, its headlights whipping up from behind in the rain and then winking out suddenly as it passed the cruiser a mile to the south.

  At 1900 hours, Flag Control came on with the hourly density reports and weather picture. The storm, which had been moving eastward, was now stationary and the forecasters were calling for it to shift back to the west once again. Thruway predictions were for rain to the Arizona line just east of Needles.

  Beulah rolled around the edge of Kingman shortly after 2100 hours and suddenly the radio sounded.

  "Car 56, this is Flag Control. Just a few minutes ago Ash Fork Checkpoint reported a red and white Travelaire moving west in the yellow at maximum speed. In this kind of weather and with the repairs on the yellow west of Kingman on the grade, you might see if you can spot this joker before he gets into trouble. This might also be the same vehicle reported stolen from this city about two hours ago and believed to have been taken by a teenager. If it is, and it's the same kid we've had trouble with before, he likes nothing but speed. And he may have a girl friend with him."

  "Car 56 affirmative," Ben replied. "We'll start looking for them right now,"

  The senior trooper swung Beulah south and into a crossover to the blue lane. He increased speed to three hundred and the safety cocoons snapped shut. Beulah's warning siren cleared the way for her as Ben tooled diagonally across the blue and into the yellow. In the left-hand seat, Clay had his eyes fixed on the monitors. Using his arm panel controls, he kept the yellow monitor switching across its three positions from the ten-mile block to the rear, to the block the cruiser was in and then to the block ahead.

  Just as Ben straightened the cruiser out in the yellow Clay yelled, "There he is. He's way ahead."

  His monitor was in the block ahead of them and Ben shifted his monitor to the same block. The red and white car was whipping through the blinding rain at better than five hundred miles an hour.

  He slammed Beulah into high and the mighty jets mashed the crew back against their seats as the cruiser accelerated. Kelly was safely enfolded in her station cocoon in the dispensary.

  Only three cars were ahead of the cruiser as it flew on its airpad down the half-mile wide, rain-slick roadway.

  "We'll never catch him before he hits the curve, Ben," Clay exclaimed. "He's wide open and wheeling."

  Ben glanced at the tach and speedometer. Beulah was fast reaching the six-hundred-mile-an-hour mark and gaining. "We're closing up." He flicked on the standard all-vehicles transmitter.

  "This is a Thruway Patrol car. The driver of the red and white Travelaire now west of Kingman on NAT-70-W in the yellow is directed to stop immediately. I repeat, driver of the red and white Travelaire in the yellow west of Kingman, you are directed to stop immediately. This is a Thruway Patrol order."

  "Ben," Clay cried, "he's almost into the curve. He'll never clear it at that speed. They haven't got the bank into the road yet."

  On the monitor screens the red and white car went hurtling into the curve at better than five hundred miles an hour. The curve down the long Kingman grade was gentle but never intended for such speeds. As the two horrified officers watched on their screens, the light sportster began slewing sideways to the left, towards the outside of the curve.

  The driver obviously was fighting to straighten it out with short additional bursts of power, but the combination of the centrifugal force on the light car and the wet roadway and lack of surface adhesion on air drive made it impossible. The car's left jet burst into a blaze of flame as the driver kicked the full afterburner into action in a last desperate attempt to hold the vehicle on the road. Almost in slow motion on the monitor screens, the car went whipping sideways against the guard rail, hurtled up into the air and rolled over several times in midair before vanishing from sight down the side of the mountain.

  Ben was already slowing Beulah while Clay took over the radio. "Flag Control, this is Car 56. Our red and white Travelaire has just taken the rail at the Kingman curve, Marker 4280. He's down the side of the hill. Get us a chopper on the double."

  "This is Flag Control. Chopper en route, Five Six, also ambulance and wrecker."

  Ben fought Beulah to a halt beside the smashed railing. Rain was still pouring down. He nosed the cruiser to the edge of the road and aimed a big flexible spotlight down the side of the hill, moving the beam back and forth. It came to rest on the shattered hulk o
f the car, several hundred feet down the rugged mountainside.

  "Let's go," Ben said quietly. "Kelly," he called on the intercom, "get on your rain suit and your kit bag, although I don't think we'll need it. Clay, you work the winch."

  He slipped on his helmet and climbed down into the rain. Kelly came up wheeling the mobile aid kit. Ben opened a panel in the cruiser's nose and pulled out the end of a cable and magnaclamp. From another side of the compartment came a wide plastic web safety belt and a pair of harnesses. Wordlessly, he and Kelly slipped into the straps and then hooked the medical kit to the belt. With the belt and harnesses secured to the cable, he gave Clay the order to lower, and the cable began to pay out down the side of the cliff. Ben kept an arm around Kelly as they backed down the almost vertical face of the slope, picking their way among the rocks and brush.

  A hundred feet down, they reached the body of a young girl. Ben flashed his light on her head and quickly turned it away. "Keep going down," he said softly into his helmet mike.

  Just short of three hundred feet of cable were out when they reached the wrecked car. Ben called to Clay to hold them there and then inched their way to the car. It was wedged upright between two boulders. Ben turned his light inside. The driver was smashed down against the seat, his face turned to the night sky and rain was pouring over his slack, bleeding features.

  Blood bubbled from his lips with his shallow breathing. "He's still alive," Ben gasped.

  Kelly was already shoving Ben aside and pushing her kit onto the seat. She whipped out a hypogun and slammed it against the youth's bared chest. "Give me your light," she snapped, "and get that chopper here in a hurry with a litter,"

  Ben leaned back out into the rain-swept night and eyed the sky. Only the lights of the cruiser were visible.

  "Clay," he called over helmet radio, "find out where that chopper is."

  A new voice broke in. "This is Chopper 115. I'm about at Marker 4275 Car 56 and I have your lights in sight. Our litter is ready to go. Where is the victim?"